AppirioDX and Salesforce DX both share the “Development Experience” suffix. But don’t let the similar names confuse you; they’re actually quite different. This blog will help clarify the differences (and similarities) between these two tools.

Salesforce DX

Salesforce Development is being reinvented with the arrival of Salesforce DX, which changes the way projects are developed and delivered. There is a lot of material available around Salesforce DX, so we won’t go into detail about what it is in this post, but let’s give a brief overview of its capabilities.

The Four Pillars of Salesforce DX

Source-Driven Development - Build together by shifting the source of truth from the org to a version control system (VCS), plus enable the use of modern collaboration technologies such as Git and third-party test-and-build automation tools.

Salesforce CLI - Speed up development across the entire Salesforce Platform with the Salesforce CLI (Command Line Interface). Built around open APIs, the Salesforce CLI can easily integrate into your existing developer workflow.

Scratch Orgs - Emulate a Salesforce org with different features and preferences within a new type of environment: the scratch org — a source-driven, fully configurable, and disposable environment that can be used for development and automated testing.

Reimagined Packaging - Salesforce DX introduces a new way to organize your metadata and distribute your apps. With Unlocked Packages and Managed Packages, both enterprise customers and partners can adopt a source-driven, CLI-centric approach to automate and manage the end-to-end lifecycle and deliver apps in a modern and efficient manner.

AppirioDX

AppirioDX is Appirio’s DevOps solution for delivering top-quality implementations by empowering developers with best-of-breed tools and methods for development, testing, and deployment. AppirioDX is built on top of Salesforce DX, so that our developers and clients get access to the latest and greatest industry tools. AppirioDX makes Salesforce implementations easier and more cost effective, and enables continuous improvement as your business needs evolve.

What makes AppirioDX distinct from Salesforce DX?

A Complete Salesforce Development Stack

Salesforce DX enables completely new capabilities such as Scratch Orgs, but AppirioDX stitches everything together in a complete development stack. The tool provides ‘opinionated defaults’ that allow you to get started immediately by using our recommended tools. But the modular architecture can also be integrated into your existing version control, CI, and software build processes.

End-to-end SDLC when used with CMC

Integrating AppirioDX with Appirio’s CMC, provides a complete development lifecycle solution. CMC provides project and agile planning, tracking, and reporting. While AppirioDX provides code scaffolding, quality analysis, automated testing, and deployment across all environments. AppirioDX provides tools and processes to simplify, manage, and support the design, implementation and testing phases of a project to deliver top-class implementations.

Source control and Continuous Integration

AppirioDX automates the setup of your version control and CI/CD process, based on your answers to a few simple questions. Support for Salesforce DX and traditional Salesforce development models is available now. Upcoming releases will include support for Google Cloud Platform, Commerce Cloud and Data Management practices.

Quality Scanning

Integration with tools like SonarQube and PMD ensures that code in our projects adheres to coding standards and developers get fast feedback on needed improvements. PMD provides immediate feedback and SonarQube provides ongoing monitoring and quality dashboards for the whole team.

ch-orgs. The CLI makes the appropriate commands available, depending on what technologies you’re working with.

Tool Integration

AppirioDX eases the installation and configuration of development tools, and empowers the development lifecycle with CMC integration to VS Code, scripts that can run on any CI engine, powerful setup scripts for Salesforce DX, quality analysis using SonarQube, and more. These tools are loosely coupled to allow customers to choose the right set for their needs.

Summary

In short, AppirioDX provides an end-to-end DevOps solution that works for both Salesforce DX and traditional Salesforce development processes.

AppirioDX transforms the development experience and frees your development team to add innovation and value, rather than struggling with manual processes. Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing more on DevOps and the AppirioDX solution.

Ready to start your DevOps transformation today? Visit the Appirio Hub to find more information on what we offer, and arrange a DevOps Assessment to get a customized roadmap to DevOps success.